That Inigo Jones was an accomplished artist is well known.
The Banqueting Hall in' Whitehall and the Queen's House at Greenwich attest his skill and taste as an architect. But the nature of his work has been misunderstood. Mr. J. Alfred Gotch, who has just written the first trustworthy life of Inigo Jones (Methuen, 12s. 6d.), shows that the imposing seventeenth century designs for a Palace of Whitehall, often reproduced and ,always ascribed to Jones, were in fact made by his pupil and nephew-in-law, John Webb. after the Restoration. This discovery proses that the Banqueting Hall, now the United Services Museum, finished in 1622, was an isolated masterpiece and not part of a grandiose plan. Born in 1573, Jones travelled much abroad and then became what we should call a scenic artist, designing scenery and costumes for the masques that Ben Jonson wrote for James the First's court. In 1615 he was appointed Surveyor of His Majesty's Works and retained that office till 1641, dying in 1652. All his time was spent on work for the Crown and for favoured courtiers hire Buckingham and Middlesex. The buildings that he designed in whole or in part are few indeed, for he had many miscellaneous and humdrum tasks to perform. But if most of the houses attributed to him were not his he was certainly a brilliant and versatile man, an adept in all the arts of design and a profound student of the best Italian architecture. Mr. Goteh's attractive and well illustrated memoir may be warmly commended.
* * * *
Previous page
